Back to 17, My Brother is the Cult Leader

On the morning of the fourth day of the Lunar New Year, Fang Yuan woke up very early.

Sparrows are chirping outside the window; it's rare to hear birdsong in Qingdao's winter.

He lay motionless in bed, his mind preoccupied with yesterday's meal.

The images overlapped, and he stared at the ceiling for a long time before suddenly remembering something.

In their previous life, after Fang Jianguo and Ding Lan got married, they still lived in the old staff quarters of the railway bureau.

The apartment has two bedrooms, is over 60 square meters, and the living room is so small that you can't even turn around.

Ding Yuchen doesn't have her own room. She has a small desk on the balcony and covers her legs with a blanket when she does her homework in winter.

Later, when Ding Yuchen went to junior high school, she grew taller and the table on the balcony became too small.

Ding Lan had discussed changing houses with Fang Jianguo, and Fang Jianguo had also looked at several places, but in the end they couldn't buy them because they were short tens of thousands of yuan.

Later, housing prices went up, and it became even more unaffordable.

Fang Yuan sat up in bed, put on a sweater, and went to the living room.

Fang Jianguo was already in the kitchen, steaming buns on the induction cooker and simmering millet porridge in the pot.

"dad."

"Awake?" Fang Jianguo turned to look at him. "Go wash your face, the porridge will be ready soon."

Fang Yuan leaned against the kitchen door frame, not moving.

"Dad, how were you feeling yesterday?"

Fang Jianguo paused in stirring the porridge. Without turning around, he mumbled, "What, how is it?"

"Aunt Ding."

Fang Jianguo was silent for two seconds, then turned down the heat and turned around.

He looked a little uncomfortable, but the corners of his mouth were turned up, which he couldn't suppress.

"She's very good," he said. "Quite quiet, and speaks very steadily."

"That's fine then."

"Her daughter is quite well-behaved too," Fang Jianguo added, as if afraid his son hadn't noticed this detail.

Fang Yuan nodded, pulled out a chair, and sat down at the dining table.

Fang Jianguo brought out the porridge: two bowls of millet porridge, a plate of fermented bean curd, and a few steamed buns.

The two sat facing each other, and heat rose between them.

"Dad, I have an idea."

"you say."

"Let's move to a different house."

Fang Jianguo put down his bowl and looked up at him.

"Our house is too small. It's only 60 square meters with two bedrooms. It won't be enough for Aunt Ding and Yuchen to stay with us in the future."

Fang Jianguo opened his mouth.

He instinctively wanted to say, "This house is great, I've lived here for over ten years," but he swallowed the words back.

He looked around the living room—newspapers were piled on the coffee table, the TV cabinet door wasn't closed properly, and clothes were hanging on the balcony, blocking half the light.

"Changing houses isn't that easy," he concluded.

"New apartments in the northern part of the city are now over 2,000 yuan per square meter, and a whole apartment would cost close to 200,000 yuan. Our family..."

"Don't worry about the money."

Fang Jianguo glared at him: "You're saying that again. You're just a student—"

"The movie 'Be There or Be Square' did very well at the box office. I was the screenwriter and received a share of the profits."

Fang Jianguo was stunned.

"And from the US, the royalties from my two books are quite substantial."

The only sound in the kitchen was the bubbling of the porridge pot.

Fang Jianguo put down the bowl, took out his cigarette case, pulled one out, and put it in his mouth without lighting it. He remained silent for a long while.

"Keep your money for yourself," he said. "You'll need it in Beijing."

"It's only right that your son, who is earning money, should use it to buy a new house for the family."

Fang Jianguo fell silent. He lit a cigarette and took a drag.

The smoke dissipated in the morning sunlight, tinged blue by the light streaming through the window.

"What are we going to do if you let Ding Yuchen come? Have she stay on the balcony?" Fang Yuan asked.

Fang Jianguo was speechless.

He thought about Ding Yuchen's timid little face, not even having a place to do her homework, and he felt uneasy about it.

"Well, it'll do, I guess." He said. "I'll take a look and see."

Fang Yuan didn't press him any further. He finished the porridge in his bowl and stood up.

I went back to my room, closed the door, and turned on my computer.

Modern laptops are thick and heavy, and the fans hum loudly when they are turned on.

He checked all three documents—the four books in the Twilight series were finished, drafts were saved, and he just needed to send them to Ellie as planned.

He wrote this series of books the fastest because the story was most complete in his mind.

He had seen the movie and read the original novel in his previous life, so he hardly had to think while writing the story of Bella and Edward, the werewolf Jacob, and the feud of the Cullen family. His fingers knew exactly what to type.

He closed the Twilight folder and opened a new document.

Title: The Hunger Games.

The cursor is flashing on the screen.

He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes for a while.

This story is much more somber than Twilight. In Panem, twelve districts surround a lavish parliament. Every year, tribute is chosen by lottery; twenty-four people go in, and only one comes out alive.

This is the ultimate performance of totalitarian rule—making the oppressed kill each other, and then telling the survivor, "You are our hero."

Katniss Everdeen, sixteen years old.

Living in the cramped quarters of District 12, her father died in a mining accident, and her mother suffered a mental breakdown. She supported her younger sister by poaching in the forest with a bow.

Fang Yuan opened his eyes and began typing.

Chapter One begins on the day of the lottery.

The oppressive atmosphere on Harvest Festival was palpable. The square was packed with people, lined up in rows by age. Everyone knew someone would die that day, but no one dared not to come.

Katniss held her sister Prim's hand tightly, remembering how nervous Prim was when she first participated in the lottery—only one name was included, and the odds were so small as to be negligible.

The congressional moderator, dressed in an exaggerated pink suit, pulled the slip of paper from the glass ball with such slow, almost theatrical movements.

When she uttered that name, Katniss's mind went blank.

Prim Ifdion.

Then Katniss rushed out and stood in front of her sister, her voice cracking as she shouted those words.

"I volunteer!"

Fang Yuan stopped and took a sip of water. This passage was written fairly smoothly.

Peeta Mailack's name was drawn—the baker's son, the boy who secretly tossed her two pieces of burnt bread in the rain. Now, the person who saved her was going to go to the arena with her.

On the train to Capitol City, he wrote about that nauseatingly extravagant dinner and their mentor, Black Mitch—a drunken old man, the only living champion in District 12.

On the train, Katniss first truly contemplated what the arena was like: it was either you or me, with no middle ground.

When they arrived at the Capitol, Fang Yuan stopped. He needed to figure out how to handle the description of the Capitol.

Susan Collins used an extremely exaggerated style to describe the extravagance of Capitol City—colorful wigs, people who had undergone plastic surgery to make their faces look like cats, and banquets where people had to take vomiting drugs before continuing to eat.

Such extreme visual stimulation works well in movies, but in written form, it needs to be released in a controlled manner, rather than all at once.

He stood up, stretched his neck, and went to the kitchen to pour himself a glass of water.